Senior MLA quits Cong in Uttarakhand

New Delhi: The Congress got a shock in Uttarakhand on Thursday when a senior MLA quit the party.

Lt Gen (retired) T P S Rawat resigned from the assembly and is expected to join the BJP government, said a PTI report from Dehradun. Rawat’s resignation is the worst setback for the Congress after it lost power in the state in March 2007.

Rawat, who represented Dhumakot in the assembly, may pave the way for Chief Minister B C Khanduri to contest a by-poll.

PTI reports that Rawat and Khanduri are in Delhi to meet senior BJP leaders. Speaker Harbans Kapoor has accepted Rawat’s resignation and issued a notification.

With Rawat’s resignation, the Congress has now 18 MLAs in the 70-member Uttarakhand House. The BJP has 35 MLAs which is one short of a simple majority.

Rawat recently met Congress president Sonia Gandhi and complained against Harak Singh Rawat’s appointment as the Leader of the Opposition in the Vidhan Sabha.

Interestingly, Khanduri had defeated Rawat in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls from Pauri, an election dubbed as the ‘clash of the generals’.